by A. G. Riddle
The drive back to Avery’s apartment was less than ten minutes, but she was asleep in the passenger seat within three.
When they arrived, Desmond reached over, shook her shoulder, and waited. He tried again, but she was dead to the world. He slipped the wrist coil with the key off her hand, walked around, opened the door, and lifted her up. He carried her to the second floor, careful not to move too quickly. Inside the apartment, he considered laying her out on the IKEA couch, but he had slept on a few of those. So, although it felt like a mild invasion of her privacy, he pushed the door to the bedroom open, revealing a queen bed on rails with no headboard. Two Kindles lay on the bedside table, one charging.
As he put her down, she stirred. That made him nervous for some reason. He waited, but she didn’t move again.
He pulled the blackout curtains tight, wrote a note, and left it on the counter: Key under the mat.
In the Phaethon Genetics conference room, Desmond sat beside the CFO and Lin Shaw, who was Phaethon’s Chief Science Officer. The only other attendee was Herman. When Desmond finished describing how the division would be split into three groups, the older man looked incredulous.
“You expect me to go from managing one group to managing three—spread across three divisions, sitting on two different floors? That’s ridiculous.”
“No,” Desmond said, “we don’t. We expect you to use your PhD in biostats you’re your programming background to help build the more complex reports assigned to the streamlined reporting group.”
The man’s mouth fell open. “I’m being demoted? You think I’m going to go sit in a cube next to the people I used to manage and write code again?”
“If you’re not willing to sit alongside the people working for you—and do the same work you’re asking them to do—there’s no place for you here. We’re a company of doers, not managers.”
Herman huffed, glanced away. “Well, who’s going to translate the requirements? And more importantly, who’s going to prioritize the work? It’ll be chaos.”
“The customers will prioritize the work. It’s their call. Each report will be assigned an estimated time to complete.” Desmond nodded toward Lin. “Science gets seventy percent of the hours available, business the other thirty. Each group internally prioritizes their own jobs based on their own needs and time estimates.”
“And the specs?”
Desmond had been waiting for that question. “We have someone in mind for that.”
Herman leaned forward.
“You know her actually. Avery Price.”
Avery flourished in her new role. She was hard-working, dedicated, and no-nonsense. She was all about the work. Despite her conduct at her first meeting with Desmond, he saw that she was quite professional at the office.
Several opportunities arose to promote her, but she declined each one. “I don’t want to be in charge,” she said. “I want to do the work.” She negotiated for more stock options instead of a higher salary. She reminded Desmond so much of himself at SciNet.
He spent more and more time with her. She was often his first point of contact when the board wanted special reports. She programmed a lot of them herself and never missed a deadline.
He was leaving the Phaethon office late on a Friday when he saw the task light on in her cubicle. He walked over, found her with her headphones on, hunched over, a window with a SQL server database diagram open, lines drawn between the tables listing the columns, like a family tree showing the relationships. She pulled a line across, creating a primary-foreign key relationship.
He knocked on the cube’s steel frame. She turned and pulled the headphones off. She had black bags under her eyes.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself.”
“Leaving soon?”
“Doubtful.”
“What’re you working on?”
“Report for Lin Shaw.” She motioned to some handwritten notes on a pad. Desmond recognized the names of a few genes and SNPs. The specs called for data sets by age groups, gender, race, and associated medical conditions.
“Looks intense.”
“It is. I’m almost too fried.”
“Come on.” He motioned to the conference room. “I’ll help you.”
She grinned as if he was kidding.
“I was a programmer once. I can still write a SQL query.”
They ordered Chinese food, sat at the conference table side by side, their laptops open, and split up the work. They put their datasets together, the pieces sliding into place slowly at first, then more quickly as they found a rhythm between them.
While they waited for a particularly complex query to execute, Desmond asked, “Why do you push yourself so hard?”
She didn’t look him in the eye. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Make something up.”
She laughed and ate a piece of sweet and sour chicken, which was almost cold now. “I guess the way I grew up. Hard work was a virtue sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
The query finished. Desmond scanned the results window. Duplicate rows. He searched the query text, then grabbed the mouse. “This left outer join needs to be an inner join—”
“I see it.” She brushed his hand off the mouse. He paused at the touch, felt his breathing accelerate. She clicked the text and typed, not making eye contact. Clearly she didn’t feel the same thing. She was determined to finish the query herself. She clicked execute again.
“So what drew you to Phaethon?”
“Money.”
Desmond shook his head. “Do you always lie when someone asks you a personal question?”
She cocked her head back in mock contemplation. “I’m detecting a circular reference in your query.”
He laughed out loud. Geek humor always got him. “No, seriously. Why do you always dodge?”
“Hard to say.”
“And why is it hard to say?”
“Data set’s too small.” She shrugged. “I don’t get many personal questions.”
“In that case, let’s try the query again. You work really hard here. But you could do that anywhere. Why here? Why this company? Come on, it won’t kill you to answer.”
She looked him in the eye. “All right. I believe in what Phaethon’s doing. Finding the genetic basis of disease. It will have a huge impact.”
“True. Is that it? There’s no… personal stakes for you?”
The query finished. It was right this time. She copied and pasted the results into an Excel spreadsheet. He thought she was going to ignore the question, but she responded, her focus firmly on the screen.
“My dad.”
Desmond said nothing, giving her time.
“He has Alzheimer’s.”
He felt like he saw the first true piece of Avery then. It was so much more personal than seeing her apartment the morning they first met, or even when she’d pulled her shirt off and changed in plain view. And he felt a new kind of connection to her. He knew what it was like to pursue something to help a sick family member. More than anything, he wanted to tell her about the Looking Glass then, to tell her that she was indeed working on something that would help her father, and so many others.
Two weeks later, Avery walked into his office. Her demeanor was different. Gone was the humble self-confidence. She seemed… almost shy. Nervous.
“What’s up?”
“I—” She scratched behind her ear. “I’d like to ask a favor.”
“Anything.”
She inhaled. “I judge this startup competition at my alma mater.”
“UNC.”
“Right.” She swallowed. “So, there’s this startup, CityForge, it’s about helping villages in the third world become cities. Anyway, I was thinking, if you were up for it, and you had time, which you probably don’t—”
“I do.”
“It’s okay if you don’t.”
“What do you need?”
“Well, I was hoping you
could, um, talk with the founders, maybe give them some pointers. I could set up a conference call—”
Desmond held up his hand. “Avery, do you have any idea how many requests for calls I get from people with the next great startup idea?”
She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.
“Just messing with you.”
She laughed, releasing some of her nervousness.
“Payback for that restraining order comment a few months ago.”
“Touché, Mr. Hughes.”
“Look, I’d be glad to. In fact, urbanization is a focus for Icarus Capital. Cities are important to what we’re doing.”
“They’re a non-profit.”
“Fine by me. I’m not that into profit these days.”
Desmond read their business plan and was impressed. CityForge had a great idea. It wasn’t strictly part of the Looking Glass, but urbanization was a helpful precursor. He decided to fly the founders out to San Francisco for dinner. He insisted Avery come along.
It was the first time he had been back to her apartment since their first meeting that morning months ago. He knocked on the door and waited. A moth circled a glowing yellow bulb, knocking against the metal shade.
The door swung wide. Avery stood in a black, form-fitting dress, her hair down, the blond locks seeming to glow against the fabric. Her blue eyes sparkled. A silver necklace hung around her neck with a locket he had never seen her wear. He was speechless.
She glanced down at herself. “I had to borrow the dress.”
“I’m… glad you did.”
She grabbed a clutch off the console table. “Don’t get used to it.”
He laughed as she locked the door.
The dinner was marvelous. He listened mostly, and talked to the founders about how important their work was. Avery drank two glasses of wine and facilitated the conversation. Desmond realized it was the first time they had been together outside the context of Phaethon. It felt like something they were doing together, as if they were partners, co-mentors to the young entrepreneurs. He agreed to join the CityForge board, and to make an investment of $150,000.
When he parked at Avery’s apartment complex again, he got out to walk her up, almost without thinking about it.
“Door-to-door service, huh?”
He fell in beside her. “Oh, I’d feel terrible if you got lost.”
“I’m sure.”
She unlocked the door and turned, a coy grin forming on her lips. “This wasn’t a date, you know?”
Desmond held up his hands. “Whoa. Who said anything about this being a date? Wait, are you saying it was a date?”
She pushed the door open. “Good night, Des.” She stepped inside, glanced back. “And thanks.”
“For what?”
“For helping those guys.”
“They’re good guys.”
“Yeah. There were three good guys there tonight.”
Chapter 38
Lin led Peyton through the Cave of Altamira’s winding passageways, her lantern held high, the light and shadow playing on the stone walls. Each time they approached a cave painting, Peyton paused, but Lin trudged on, eyes fixed on the uneven ground.
At the hidden chamber, they had divided into three groups: Peyton and Lin, Avery and Nigel, and the two SEALs, who had remained to guard the sealed cases.
In the dim light, Peyton saw a cave painting ahead on their left. Four legs, a large body, no antlers. A doe.
“Mom, look.”
“It’s not it,” Lin said without even turning her head to look. A second later, she said, “It’s just ahead.”
Peyton held her response, but she was certain now: her mother knew exactly where she was going. A theory formed in her mind. She would soon test it.
The passage opened slightly into a small chamber with more paintings on the walls and a few scattered on the ceiling. Lin walked straight to the back left corner of the room and stopped, squinting, clearly surprised. She held up the lantern and illuminated a painting of a doe, standing proud, its lines drawn in black and red. Beside it stood a buck with seven points, painted completely black. Below the two adult deer stood a fawn, less than half the size of its parents.
Now Peyton was sure.
Lin squatted and held a hand out to the fawn, ran her finger across it. The black came away like soot from a fireplace. Peyton was taken aback at her mother’s brazen desecration of this ancient site.
“Mom—”
“It’s not original,” Lin said quickly. Almost to herself, she whispered, “It wasn’t here before.”
Peyton moved to her mother and squatted in front of the painting. “It wasn’t here when you visited before.”
Lin continued wiping away at the fawn, which was disappearing line by line, starting at the bottom, like a curtain being lifted.
Peyton pressed the point. “When you visited with Dr. Paul Kraus.”
Lin kept wiping. Just a little of the fawn remained. Then it was gone.
“Who was your father.”
Lin’s eyes snapped to Peyton. “That took you long enough.”
Chapter 39
“He’s my grandfather,” Peyton said, coming to grips with the revelation.
“Yes,” Lin said. Her hands were covered in the black charcoal paint.
“He was a Nazi.”
“He was not. He was a German, but not a Nazi. Your grandfather was a good man. One caught on the wrong side of a war that consumed the world.”
“He brought you here.”
“In 1941.”
“That’s why he chose this hiding place, isn’t it? Altamira is special to you.”
“And to him. This is a very, very remarkable place, Peyton. It is perhaps the oldest evidence we have of the cognitive revolution. It was a singularity whose impact is still rippling through our reality.”
Peyton studied the cave painting, of the doe and buck standing above the now-erased fawn. “What happened here in 1941?”
Lin took a deep breath. “Papa woke me up late one summer night and told me to pack only the things I couldn’t live without. Well, I was a child, so you know what that meant: dolls, a dollhouse, a train set. I had a lot of toys; I was an only child, and they had doted on me. And books, of course. I had just learned to read, and I couldn’t get enough of them. Grimm’s Fairy Tales was my favorite. And Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
Peyton smiled. “You’re Alice.”
“So it would seem. I surprised him. I packed all of my books. The suitcase was bursting at the seams and far to heavy for me to lift. When Papa saw my suitcase filled with books, the toys in a pile off to one side, he was so proud. He emptied his own luggage and filled it with my toys. He knew what was coming and that I would need them.
“We left on a night train out of Berlin, westbound toward France, which had already fallen and been under German control for over a year. The British had escaped the previous summer at Dunkirk. The border crossing between France and Germany was uneventful. But when we reached the Spanish border, they interrogated us. To the border guards, we looked like another German family escaping. But Papa talked our way through it.” She paused as if remembering something.
“And you came here? To this cave?”
“Yes. He led an expedition here. It was a cover though. One morning he woke me up early, led me inside the cave, and showed me the paintings. That was a special moment—the first time he had given me a glimpse of his research and how his mind worked.”
Lin looked at the cave painting. “Our journey ended here. The original painting was only a doe.”
“He added the stag and fawn.”
Lin nodded. “They symbolize our family. He was protecting us. We left on a ship bound for Hong Kong that day.”
“Why Hong Kong?”
“My parents thought we’d be safe there. They were wrong. My mother—your grandmother—was a scientist too, and a Chinese national with dual British citizenship. Her family had lived in Hong Kong for fi
fty years. Her brother was still there. The city had been under British control since 1841. It was called the Pearl of the Orient—a major trading hub, financial center, and a strategic location with a deep harbor.
“In 1941, the Chinese and Japanese had already been at war for four years, and it was bloody. The Battle of Shanghai involved almost a million combatants. Chiang Kai-shek lost his best troops and officers there. They never recovered. The following month, the Japanese took Nanking, the Chinese capital at the time. And what they did there… was inhuman. After the losses, the Chinese were on the defensive. China and Germany were still allies at this time; the Germans had trained the best Chinese officers. And the German military advisors advised their ally to use perhaps their only weapon against the Japanese invaders: land. China’s interior is vast; conquering it would stretch out the Japanese supply lines and divide their army.”
“I thought Japan and Germany were allies in the Second World War?”
“Eventually. The relationship between Japan and Germany was somewhat antagonistic before the war. Japan had been a British ally in the First World War, had fought against German troops in Asia, and had taken all of Germany’s territory. Japan was also a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles that punished Germany for the war. But six months after Shanghai and Nanking fell, Germany switched its alliance, recalled its advisors, and stopped giving military aid to China.”
Lin studied the painting of the buck and doe. “Anyway, when we arrived in Hong Kong, the Sino-Japanese War had bogged down for years, with seemingly endless battles on the Chinese mainland. My parents assumed that the Japanese would never attack the British, as that would divide their focus; China was a big enough prize. With Mother’s only family in Hong Kong and British troops guarding the city, she and Papa both thought we’d be safe there, that the British would never give up the city and that the Chinese would fight to retake it if they did. These were reasonable assumptions, but they were wrong. On both counts.”
Lin rubbed the black soot on her fingers, as if she were trying to wipe away dried blood. “Five months after we arrived, on December seventh, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, they invaded Hong Kong. The British and Canadian forces fought for eighteen days, but they were outnumbered and surrounded. We were bombed day and night from the air, stormed on the ground, and shelled from the sea. The last troops surrendered on Christmas Day. We called it Black Christmas. The occupation was… humanity at its worst. They starved us, tortured us, and some of us they just loaded on trucks and boats and carted off to be used as slave labor. When the Japanese invaded, there were 1.6 million people living in Hong Kong. When the war was over and the British returned in 1945, there were less than 600,000. A million people dead or gone. Nearly two out of every three. My mother was one of them.”